Mental
by Demeter'sAdvocate
Summary: Lily Evans is declared insane and is admitted into a mental asylum. Can she survive a family that abandoned her, strange things happening to her where she is supposed to be safe, an awful hospital? And more, will she ever get a chance to meet the one?
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own HP. Only the plot belongs to me.  
  
Summary: Lily Evans has always seen things that were supposedly 'unreal'. Declared insane, she is put in a mental asylum. On her thirteenth birthday, she is taken away into the magical school, Hogwarts.  
  
The London Gazette  
  
First Girl Under Eighteen To Be Entered Into Mental Asylum Written By Loretta Peale  
  
Lily Evans (10) was put in a mental asylum today, the first underage person to do so.  
  
"She always said that she saw things that weren't there," Claims her sister, Petunia Evans (14). "I always knew she was loony."  
  
"We just want the best for our youngest daughter and it is our hope that she can be restored to her normal mind in a few years." Mr. and Mrs. Evans tell.  
  
Lily Evans claims to have seen various things such as buses appearing out of nowhere and young boys on broomsticks playing with a golden ball with wings.  
  
"Lily Evans's case is an extremely unusual one." Experts say. "For no traumatic event has happened in her life according to her family that may have caused her insanity."  
  
Lily Evans herself was unavailable for comment but tells her parents that she knows she is not insane and the boys on the broomsticks will take her away from the place her parents are taking her to.  
  
Lily stared around her old room, now stripped of any sign that said a young girl might have lived there. She stared out the window, suitcase in hand, listening to birds chirp. Tears poured down her face. How could her family lock her up like this? They thought she was insane. But she wasn't! She wasn't! The buses had really been there. The old people appearing out of nowhere had really been there as well! She wasn't crazy like the old man who lived down the street and yelled at people passing by.  
  
How could everyone abandon her like this? They all knew she was intelligent at school, hardworking and obedient at home.  
  
There was a soft knock behind her. Lily turned around.  
  
"Lily dear?" Mrs. Evans asked quietly. Lily did not say a word.  
  
"It's time to go."  
  
Lily followed her mother down the stairs without conversation. They clambered in awkwardly in the yellow cab after a few stiff goodbyes and hugs from her father and a few insults from her elder sister, Petunia.  
  
They rode in silence until they reached a tall, brick building where dark emotions seemed to emanate from.  
  
"Well, I suppose this is goodbye." Her mother murmured, hugging her. Lily did not hug back. This was not her mother. This was a traitor, someone who did not love her but wanted to get rid of her.  
  
Her real mother would have believed her.  
  
They walked into the building where Lily was admitted. Finally, she turned to her mother and said the words she had been bursting to say for months.  
  
"I hate you." She said without emotion and then followed a nurse, ignoring the broken look on her mother's once beautiful face.  
  
There, Lily Evans spent three years of torture where she had conversations with psychiatrists and had medicine pumped into her body regularly without a soul she could call a friend.  
  
James Potter finished reading the article his mother had handed her and frowned, running his fingers through his already windswept hair.  
  
"Such a shame, isn't it?" His mother asked. James nodded, only thinking of poor Lily Evans who was forced to be in a mental asylum for being a witch.  
  
"Such talent wasted." She murmured. James thought back all of a sudden, remembering a young girl who had been watching him once as he boarded the Knight Bus. James had pondered how she could see him when she was undoubtly a muggle. As he rode away, her face was etched into his memory. It wasn't that she was gorgeous or anything because she wasn't. But the pure pain and agony in her expression, the look of want had made sure he would never forget her face. She had had red hair, curly hair that went down to her waist and deep pools of emerald eyes with a few scatterings of freckles across her otherwise unblemished and pale skin.  
  
He glanced at the picture in the newspaper of Lily Evans. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Lily Evans had been the one he had seen, years before.  
  
But after a year, when he was accepted into Hogwarts, he gradually forgot about Lily Evans and her expression of wistfulness was stowed in the back of his mind, resurfacing years later. 


	2. Cheese and Unidentified Things

It was later. Much later. Lily sat in her darkened room, no expression on her face. A white gown hid her thin frame, as quiet and innocent as she was. There was a small knock and then a timid nurse poked her head in the room.

"Lily, um, it's time for dinner. Come on." Lily slowly looked up. An unfamiliar face, young, only a bit older than Lily. No wonder she was so frightened. Lily nodded slowly, as though not quite in that plane of reality. Silently, Lily stood. Shuffling her feet, she walked behind the nurse, lost in her mind.

She had been there for three years now. Lily had been diagnosed with bipolar depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia, schizophrenia, and various other mental diseases.

_Stuck with no place to go, no life to live. Nothing._

Dinner was a greasy mixture of cheese and something unidentifiable. Lily dragged her fork through it listlessly. Other people were around her, crazy too. But none of them were as screwed as she was. They talked, she listened. They ran, and she trudged. They laughed, she cried. Even them, people stuck where she was, had a chance. They could get over it all and move on. But she couldn't.

_I'm not crazy, really! This is my mind, how it works, how it is. Just let me be._

Maybe I am crazy, Lily thought dully. Maybe I imagined it all. Why do I have to be so stubborn? But the boy...he looked so kind...almost like an angel. A guardian angel. Lily smiled despite herself.

Then it was time to go to her psychiatrist. He was a fat, balding man who smiled in a gremlin-like way and laughed at people's problems too much.

"Hello, Lily. How're you today?" Ever day he asked that question and never got an answer.

"What's been going through your mind lately?" These sessions were mostly silent, occasionally Lily would speak.

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all? Oh, don't be like that! Everyone's always thinking of something!"

_Flashes of lightning, children crying, hope lost, abandoned. Nothing being left. The boy gone too._

"I wondered when my parents would come visit me." Dull, flat. Lily said that only to put him off. Dr. Scoalie (his name, believe it or not) bristled.

"Well, they may not have come in the last few...er, years but that doesn't mean they don't miss you! They truly hope you'll come home soon."

_Where was home? Their villa in Majorca? The one they bought two months after she was abandoned?_

The rest of the period was unsuccessful and this time the shrink gave up after twenty minutes.

A group session, a shower, then it was time to sleep.

Lily crawled into the scratchy white cot.

_Am I real? Is anything real?_


End file.
